9.28.2007

James' position is that the most immediate and cost-effective way to relieve traffic congestion in the Lower Mainland is to immediately invest in a massive expansion of public transit. She doesn't completely rule out twinning the Port Mann Bridge someday, but that someday comes well after commuters have been treated to expanded bus networks and light rail service south of the Fraser River. James' stance on Gateway is an example of why a growing number of New Democrats, rightly or wrongly, want to dump her as their leader. Her position is populist, pragmatic, and astute. She's framed the issue in popular terms of the public wanting action now, and ruling out twinning the bridge altogether would have drawn the ire of Surrey's NDP MLAs. The problem is in our current era of Liberal big lie thug politics, this kind of moderation simply doesn't fly.

Since taking office in 2001, the Liberals have redefined the term 'good government' to mean how well they can appease their supporters (in the case of Gateway, the construction companies and auto dealers who bankroll the party) and manipulate the media to manufacture support for initiatives that their supporters can profit from at the expense of the public. It's not about logic or consensus cost-effectiveness, it's about winning and crushing your opponents.

The problem for James and the NDP is that being right isn't enough because British Columbians are conditioned to attack dog politics. James was handed a lot of credit for the party's electoral turnaround in 2005, but it wouldn't have happened without the tough-as-nails tag team of Joy MacPhail and Jenny Kwan in the Legislature. Frankly, James lets too much go. When Kevin Falcon says that James arguing against twinning the Port Mann "arguing directly contrary to the position that her government took.", something needs to be said about leaders having the wisdom to revisit important policy, and the fact that Glenn Clark is on Jimmy Pattison's payroll, not the NDP's.

Opposing Gateway presents a real opportunity for the NDP to articulate a sound alternative vision to the Liberals' record of tax cuts for the rich and public-private porkbarelling. Certainly, one needs a good grasp of the facts, but one also needs a good grasp around the neck of your opponents.

9.27.2007

Move along, Barney

Stanley Park has had its share of adversity over the past few years: the murder of Aaron Webster, the senseless beating of Ji-Won Park, threats of forest fires, windstorms that devastated popular forest areas and put the Seawall out of commission, and the lack of park maintenance resulting from the ongoing civic strike. The Vancouver Parks Board (VPB) needs to address critical issues of safety and security in order to encourage Vancouverites to return to the park that was once the jewel in this city's crown. Unfortunately, the Park Board has their own ideas about how to bring people back:giant robot dinosaurs!

The VPB thinks this idea is so great that they tried to hide it from their own elected Commissioners. Instead of letting residents and visitors enjoy the natural splendor of forests, gardens, and views of Coal Harbour and English Bay, we will be expected to tolerate hoards of slack-jawed trailer trash tourists shelling out to drag their squealing progeny past mechanical behemoths in a cheezy effort to transform our city park into a theme park. This page shudders to think what's next. If an NPA majority is returned to Council after the next civic election, their Developer overlords may get to sink their teeth into Hastings Park after all, which at this rate, will put Playland somewhere next to the Causeway....

9.26.2007

Mama's Boy?

This page extends his condolences to Premier Gordon Campbell for the passing of his mother, Peg Campbell, at the age of 82. As I know from experience, it's never easy to lose a parent at any age. However, the loss of a parent is poignant milestone in all of our lives, and gives pause for reflection. In fact the Premier may want to reflect a little harder on the memory of his mother raising him and his three siblings on a school secretary's salary after his father succumbed to alcoholism and suicide. I don't think he's learned a thing from that experience.

This page has made it clear on a few occasions that the Gordon Campbell is a man who has some serious issues and has no business acting as Premier of British Columbia. It's highly disturbing to invoke his mother's struggles to raise her children as rational for his Liberal government's reckless 25% tax cut shortly after taking office in 2001:

"I always ask myself, when government takes money out of your paycheque would Peg Campbell say 'thank you very much' for taking that money?' I can't remember my mom ever waking up the day after getting her paycheque and saying I've just got too much here to spend on the kids."

Campbell's 25% tax cut in 2001 went across the board, creating significant savings only for the wealthy in B.C., and at the same time decimated the province's revenue base. This 'structural deficit' laid the groundwork for an expansion of user fees and increased MSP premiums, the elimination of vital social programs, and the Liberals' unforgivable tearing up of legally binding collective agreements. Mr. Premier, it's one thing when the government takes money out of a paycheque, it's another thing to take away someone's paycheque altogether: that's why the Supreme Court called you on it. As for the Liberals war on welfare, did it ever occur to the Premier that the experience of his mother is what motivated governments to cast the social safety net that he and his corporate right-wing ilk are bent on tearing apart?

It is sad to the point of pitiful to hear the Premier use his personal grief to score political and ideological points. I can extend my sympathies to him and his family for their loss, but every day this page sympathizes with the people and communities who are forced to put up with the most arrogant Provincial government in Canadian history.

9.25.2007

UVIC Students Society holds off Military Offensive

Student politics at B.C. Universities never cease to bemuse this page. It's always a marginal handful of idealistic go-getters who run for actually run for office, and are subsequently ignored by an apathetic student population. When a students union or society use whatever mandate has been left lying around for them to make an actual, honest, courageous decision, the hitherto oblivious backpack horde screams bloody murder and yelps for heads to roll.

Such is the case with the University of Victoria Students Society banning the Canadian Armed Forces from an upcoming career fair at their Student Union Building. According to President Tracey Ho, the Student Society executive believes that recruiters are less than upfront about the 'psychological, emotional, and physical impact' that Armed Forces personnel face when approaching potential recruits. This page can't confirm that point specifically, but I do know that at the Forces' pavilion at last month's Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver, I had a very difficult getting any of troops to mention the word 'Afghanistan'. By the way, the souvenir 'Support Our Troops' dog tags you passed out at taxpayers' expense were a nice touch.

Nonetheless, the good little boys and girls at UVIC who vote Conservative like their mommies and daddies feel so upset by their ELECTED representatives that they're passing around a petition to have the entire Student Society Executive removed from office. Unlike the Student Society elections where candidates debated the issues in hostile obscurity, the wannabe chickenhawks are aided and abetted by such champions of free speech as the Globe and Mail's Gary Mason, who described the Society's decision as "an insult to the intelligence" of UVIC's student body.

Wrong. The real insult, added to injury, is exposing students, who are facing academic and financial pressures far more crushing than any class before them, to recruiters hungry for fresh meat to grind on the Kandahar killing fields. Any UVIC student who is that gung-ho to serve is more than welcome (and intelligent enough) to report to 827 Fort Street in Victoria from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM, Noon to 4:00 on Saturdays. A career fair isn't about 'getting both sides of the story', it's about getting a job. Do the upset UVIC students think it would have been better if the Forces were invited and their efforts ended up getting disrupted by demonstrating peace activists?

This is what happens when you don't pay attention to who's running for office, and you don't vote. If you can't be bothered to exercise your democratic freedoms, suck it up and don't cry to the media about how the army can't come to your school to tell you about how they're 'protecting' your freedoms.

9.24.2007

Get off the stage

Last weekend, this page had the pleasure, and misfortune of attending the 'Best of the Fest' performance at the Vancouver Comedy Festival. I usually enjoy stand-up comedy, so Walnut Boat and I opted for this variety platter on the premise that if any of the comics sucked that hard, they wouldn't be on stage that much.

The 'comedian' who was on at the end of the first half of the show should be glad I didn't quite catch his name, and I was sitting in the balcony. It was a relatively weak evening as most of the talent delivered material for a suburban, comfortable upper middle class who likes things the way they are, annoying for someone like me who comes from the George Carlin/Chris Rock school of invective. This 'comedian' who I did hear is a writer for Rick Mercer's weekly suck-up session on the CBC, went, in this page's opinion, a little too far.

Had this page been sitting anywhere near this 'comedian' when he sniped that he would "rather give money to support the troops than to those idiots on the sidewalks with their cardboard resumes", rest assured, he would not have finished his five minutes. The usual West Side fascists and Fraser Valley troglodytes laughed and applauded, but the rest of us managed an outraged glaring silence that had this fool retreating into weak camping anecdotes. Some of us still remember the words of a former Vancouver Mayor who opened his election campaign with the words "No one is disposable". Had I been seething a little less to come up with a decent heckle, it would have been "If I wanted bullsh*t right wing commentary, I would have picked up the National Post!"

Unfortunately, that wouldn't have worked either - as part of CanWest Global's sponsorship of the festival, they were giving out free copies of the Post in the lobby during the intermission. Jingoism and homeless bashing may be in vogue again, but they sure as hell aren't funny.

9.21.2007

Let's No Shopping!!

To follow up on yesterday's musings about the Canadian dollars parity with its U.S. counterpart, this page has seen a number of media outlets over the past 48 hours acting as cheerleaders for the Bellingham (WA) Chamber of Commerce. Reporters who would otherwise be covering picket lines or police incidents are gleefully pulling their best Bob Barker...er...Drew Carey impression in telling us how Right the Price is.

The problem for this page, is that the cheerleaders are all waving the same pom-poms, as if my material needs and wants are identical to who they perceive as their audience. Here's a graphic from today's Globe and Mail which lists a comparison of 'key' items (I assume that outside of Vancouver, it would be jeans instead of yoga pants). After going through this list, I'm convinced that the best way to save money in these days of dollar parity is not to buy anything.

Why would I buy an IPodNano? IPods have a typical lifespan of six months and Apple doesn't deserve a cent from me for their efforts in marginalizing the open source MP3 format. I still contend that the Harry Potter books are more about branding than actual literature, so I can give them a pass. Yoga Pants? Sorry dude, my metrosexuality stops at the man purse, damn it. Starbucks coffee? Coffee is a commodity I need BEFORE leaving my house, and I can grande brew it myself, thank you. As for a litre of gasoline and a Chevy Impala to put it in, what the hell do people think it was that got the U.S. in trouble to the point where Canada's dollar equals theirs? Could it be, I don't know, slaughtering Iraqis and their own troops for a steady supply of gas to put in their Chevy Impalas?

If one uses the advice of this page, your total savings by not shopping for the Globe's featured items in the U.S. would come to $28,455.25 US. If you just stay home and not go shopping, that goes up to $35,944.54. It's that easy.

9.20.2007

For this page, that news is not so bad in the short or long term. I have a getaway planned for Mount Baker, WA next week, which will also include a stop at Bellis Fair Mall in Bellingham. A good portion of my retirement savings are in bonds and treasury bills rather than the stock market, so the ascending loonie puts my senior self a little closer to buying name brand dolphin-friendly tuna rather than the iffy store label variety. It's the time in between that has this page more than a little nervous. Unlike our petroleum soaked, carbon farting Alberta neighbours throwing all their eggs at the gas pump, British Columbia has a patchwork of key industries, from Forestry to Films, all of which have prospered with a lower dollar. Now that the odds are 1 to 1, all bets are off.

Given the catastrophic failure of the Project for a New American Century from Baghdad to the Bayou, it's not like the braintrust in Victoria could have failed to see this day coming. However, Gordon Campbell and the Liberals, after all their alarmist screaming about a phony 'structural' deficit left behind by the previous NDP administration, continue to throw good money after bad ideas like the Gateway Project, renovating the Sea to Sky Highway for Whistler's wealthy, treaties with First Nations that won't stand up in court, the expanding roster of failed public-private partnerships, and the repetitive propaganda reel of their "The Best Place on Earth" Campaign.

After an extended period of dollar parity and the bills from the 2010 Olympics crush B.C.'s tax base, the rabid dogs of the right will be screaming for heads to roll. Not Campbell's head or those of his comfortable cronies, but rather those heads attached to working people struggling to get by, whose only 'crime' is that they work at a union job in the public sector. 2010 may be on its way, but the clouds are gathering for a perfect storm that could bring back 1983 as well.

9.19.2007

Jackson Pollock had perspective too.

Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon says that BC Ferries passengers need perspective on the corporation's recently 25% fare hike. Truth be told, this page needs some kind of 'perspective' any time Kevin Falcon opens his mouth, because whatever he's trying to pass off as sound transportation policy is always some indecipherable mishmash of right wing ideology and good ol' fashioned pork-barrelling.

It was Kevin Falcon who told us that building a mass transit system down Cambie Street would be more cost effective than building one through the already existing Arbutus rail corridor. It was Kevin Falcon who claimed that shoving more private vehicles on to a twinned Port Mann Bridge and Highway 1 in order to gridlock the streets of Vancouver would somehow reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Now it's Kevin Falcon who claims that British Columbians should be happy to pay a lot more to ride ferries that his government refused to tender to local shipyards, are managed by his myopic union-busting sycophant David Hahn, and were christened with such asinine names as Coastal Celebration. Whether its on the roads, rails, or waters of B.C., every deluded megaproject and ripoff from the desk of the Transportation Minister makes any B.C. taxpayer with any real perspective die a little more inside.

9.18.2007

Jack can't win Much reading of the tea leaves this morning after Thomas Muclair's victory for the NDP in the Outremont byelection: Are the Liberals finished as the federalist choice in Quebec? Did Michael Ignatieff's people sabotage Jocelyn Coulon's candidacy? Will Stephane Dion resign? The only matter that the talking heads in the national media appear to have resolved is that Muclair's victory is not a breakthrough for the NDP in Quebec.

This dismissal appears based on the facts that the New Democrats ran a popular candidate in a riding where they had a wedge issue (ie. the Afghanistan mission), and Jack Layton, who polls consistently well among party leaders in Quebec, visited Outremont several times. Why can't this successful formula be repeated elsewhere in Quebec where there are popular candidates and defining wedge issues? If you believe the Globe & Mail, the National Post, et al, it's because it's the NDP.

"The NDP can't win" is a political myth that hopefully will one day evaporate. If the myth that the Liberals are a progressive party of the left is demolished, then that day will come a lot sooner.

The seating capacity at General Motors Place is about 18,000, and the Canucks season ticket base (most of which is corporations padding expense accounts and writing it off) is about 17,000, which makes Canucks tickets the perfect metaphor for living in Vancouver. The wealthy, the well-connected, the lucky, and those who bought at the right time get to be part of the action. The rest of us are consigned to seeing it on TV at home - if we're fortunate enough to have a home.

Once upon a time, this page used to go to quite a few NHL games in Calgary, largely due to the fact that the Calgary Flames expanded the seating capacity of the Olympic Saddledome from 17,000 to 20,000 seats. The extra seats were about $10 a game. In this day and age NHL teams would rather just raise prices beyond what real people can afford rather than increase capacity. That may be fine for hockey tickets, but it's not for housing: someone needs to blow the whistle on governments and influential developers who use the same strategy.

9.13.2007

He's invoking the Charter of WHAT?

By refusing to support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Canada's 'New Government' (tm) proves that they are in fact, the same gang of small-minded racist reactionaries of the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance. The only new element in the Conservative's flipping the bird to the aspirations of Canada's First Nations (and Aboriginal Peoples throughout the world) is that they are wrapping themselves in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to do it. Hey, this page is as shocked as you are, but unfortunately, Chuck Strahl has figured out how to use the Charter as a cynical political tool to advance the Tories toward a majority government.

Voting against a non-binding resolution because of Charter considerations and that it 'lacks clear guidance for implementation' is either psychotic or sinister reasoning, unless one is trying to sway voters in the suburbs and exburbs of Quebec and Ontario's 905 region that Stephen Harper won't stand another Oka or Caledonia. The Prime Minister claims Canada shouldn't 'vote for things on the basis of political correctness; we should actually vote on the basis of what's in the document'. Nothing in the resolution overrides the authority of the Canadian government, and nothing in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of the Child, which was rejected by Alberta's caveman regime voided the rights of parents to discipline their children.

In both cases, all Conservatives had to do was vote for the damn non-binding thing and let someone feel better about themselves. If they can't even do that, why should anyone trust them with making any decisions that involve actual governing?

9.12.2007

37 posts, and I'm half as good as he is.

Over at the affiliate site to this page, Revolutionary Moderation, Don is celebrating his 1,000 post. As regular readers will recall, this page started blogging as vacation filler for RevMod whenever Don wandered off to the Cayman Islands to watch for hurricanes, put back cheap rum and check on his secret bank accounts.

An occasion such as this proves futurists right when they talk about an increasing pace of change. When Don started his blog in 2002, he was one of the few, the proud, well, as proud as CB radio enthusiasts or bulletin board operators were in their day. As I was more involved in writing for various union newsletters at the time, I kind of smiled and nodded at Don and his musings while listening to my $275 MP3 player with 30 MB of memory.

Five years later, everybody has their own blog or page on a social network site, and I have a gig worth of tunes for $50. Where does the time go? Fortunately, some things haven't changed: neither Don or I really care if Britney Spears let herself go.

9.11.2007

This page will dispense with any snapshots of where I was or what I was doing at the time when a sizable portion of Manhattan real estate was reduced to ashes, not I will entertain any conspiracy theories, which if you're scoring at home, ring closer to the truth for this page than the official story. Instead, today I reflect on the path this country could have taken if we had accepted the emotionally overheated advice of the conservative punditry at that time.

The op-ed pages and talk shows during that September of 2001 were a hyperventilating attempt at vindication for Canada's right wing. The trauma radiating from the attacks like so much toxic dust from the World Trade Center suppressed the voices opposed to corporate globalization which had started making serious noise at the WTO meetings in Seattle two years earlier. There was no alternative to Pax Americana, Canada 'had' to sign on to the U.S. missile defence plan, Canada 'had' to establish a common security perimeter, Canada 'had' to adopt the American dollar.

Imagine if Jean Chretien and his government of the day had accepted the bucolic mantra that "There is no Alternative". The men and women of our armed forces would have been cut down on the killing fields of Afghanistan and Iraq. The economic security of our social programs would have been surrendered to meet the persistent, conflicting, and nonsensical demands of the Police State. The Canadian economy would have been shattered as the Bush Administration's abject crashed the U.S. Dollar against the Euro, a trade deficit with China, and America's own cannibalistic credit industry.

It has been said that tragedy plus time equals comedy. I don't think that can ever be said about 9/11, but Canadians should consider themselves fortunate that in the aftermath of that tragedy, we were spared a comedy of errors even greater than the one we live through today.

9.10.2007

Harper's Veiled Attack on Democracy

Just in time for the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Prime Minister Stephen Harper throws a tantrum at Elections Canada for trying address the democratic rights of Muslim women in Canada. Although this page is disappointed with Elections Canada's lack of consultation with the Muslim community, the policy appears reasonable: women who wear a burka or a niqab to the polls will be asked to removed it. If they decline to do so, they will either need to produce two pieces of ID, or one piece of ID and a personal voucher. For the approximately 200,000 Muslims in Quebec who might be voting in Federal byelections in Quebec next Monday, this policy that so infuriates the Prime Minister covers about 50 of them.

Of course, targeting a small minority within a minority would never be used in Quebec as cynical political strategy, just ask Maurice...er...Mario Dumont and his Union Nation...er...Action Democratique. In Quebec's recent Provincial election, Dumont almost rode a similar controversy all the way to the Premier's office. As Quebec holds the keys to a federal majority government, it's not surprising to see a Conservative Prime Minister playing the Islamaphobic race card for all its worth.

The disturbing and malevolent piece within Harper's reaction is the fact that he is ready to go after Elections Canada and force a confrontation with a respected, non-partisan government agency. The Prime Minister claims that it's Parliament that should be making the laws, but this page says that Parliament is supposed to make laws that respect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, no matter how much the governing Conservatives dislike it. When the Tories passed Bill C-31, they passed what amounted to little more than Republican exercises in voter suppression and breaching privacy. Compared to the binners, bottle collectors, and squeegee jockeys of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, who are denied their rightful franchise for lack of a fixed address, Muslim Women in Quebec have it easy in trying to cast a vote.

Is Canadian society going to collapse because a few dozen women who aren't likely to participate in the electoral process, let alone leave their homes, might go the polls wearing a veil? Or is it more likely to collapse because opportunistic governments scapegoat these women to dismantle the very process that elected them?

In case you haven't noticed, the frequent use of quotation marks by this page are to point out statements that fall outside the boundaries of common sense or the truth. For example, CKNW is not B.C.'s news leader, CKNW is the leader in collecting and recirculating the fascist vomit of its rabid barking dog audience. Any radio station with a Charles Adler and Christy Clark on the payroll is not a station committed to actual journalism.

Is CUPE "cracking down" on its members? As someone who has been on a number of picket lines in Alberta and British Columbia, this page can report with absolute certainty that the instructions outlined in the memo are as standard picket line protocol as it would be for CUPE to tell its members to wear picket signs reading "On Strike". How stupid do CKNW and the other media outlets stumping for Sam Sullivan and the NPA seriously think the public is? Are we supposed to believe that refraining from physically restraining people or writing letters to the editor are secretive, belligerent tactics forced on CUPE members by their leadership?

The real story is that this strike has entered its seventh week without a violent incident, save those fabricated by City Hall. What the Union is doing in reminding members about picket line protocols is helping them prepare for what now appears is going to be an even longer haul, as the City and their media allies ramp up the potshots, push polls, and puke on the call-in shows, rather than actually negotiate an agreement.

9.05.2007

The beat goes on

This page is disappointed, but not surprised that over the Labour Day weekend, City of Vancouver officials rejected an offer from striking CUPE civic workers. The lack of surprise comes from an understanding of the history of Vancouver's so-called "Non-Partisan" Association which currently controls City Council. The NPA was established in 1937 because Vancouver's capitalist elite, shaken by labour unrest radiating from the Depression, lived in irrational terror of a Bolshevik coup at City Hall. This belligerent anti-union alliance of Liberals and Conservatives ruled Vancouver for decades, and would later be aped by W.A.C. Bennet and Social Credit across the Province.

In our day and age, the NPA stands for little more than winning at all costs and keeping the CCF/NDP/COPE out of power. It's pretty much the same right-wing, "don't blink", "no cut and run" bullying bullsh*t that powers the Bush Administration in Washington, Stephen Harper's government in Ottawa, and the regime of Gordon Campbell, a former NPA mayor, in Victoria. At 12th and Cambie, it's meant having to put up with a Mayor who won't come clean about stealing the 2002 election from Vision Vancouver's Jim Green by using the phony shadow candidacy of James Green. Sam Sullivan has been recorded in a documentary about himself talking about how much he loves stepping on his opponents' throats, and when CUPE hit the picket lines, he made a point of telling the public he had better things to do than deal with the strike. If there is any major North American being run by a criminal organization lead by a sociopath, I think this page may be pretty close to being there.

After 47 days, this strike has appeared to come down to two issues: Contracting out and Whistleblower protection. In the case of contracting out: CUPE wants an agreement with the city that their members won't be replaced by private contractors in the run-up to, during, or after the Olympics. The City has a similar arrangement with the Pacific National Exhibition, they don't go firing the high school kids from CUPE 1004 who worked at Playland all summer during the Fair at the end of August and replace them with out-of-town carnies. If it works for the Fair, why can't it work for the Olympics? Is it because the Olympics, unlike the Fair, is supposed to be the biggest showcase for right-wing capitalism (masquerading as public-private partnerships)since the Berlin games of 1936?

As for Whistleblower protection, it's a no-brainer for any person with an understanding of the term 'ethics', but it's completely natural that an NPA-controlled City Hall would be against it. Withholding that protection keeps it easy for the NPA to fire city staff and bust their unions, who will now be working at full capacity next year to drive the NPA out of office. Keeping a lid on whatever corruption is taking place also makes it easier to focus the public's attention on such non-issues as the "rift" between COPE and Vision Vancouver, despite the fact that both centre-left parties are on speaking terms, and cooperate during and outside of elections.

At this point, this page sees this thing ending like this: Sam Sullivan will beg for Gordon Campbell to step in, the BC Fed will shut down Vancouver for a day or two in order to pressure the City into a deal, or some combination of the two. Stay tuned for the staggering conclusion.

Spartikus - thanks for the info. I was thinking of something else in relation to 1925.